Winter Travel, Holiday Peace

Out on the road or close to home, the winter holidays always present me with chances to consider paradoxes of travel: solitude and crowds, people who love Christmas, people who trash the whole of the holiday idea, people who are celebrating other holidays altogether, people who go at things full tilt in a hurry people who reflect and consider, light and dark, cold and warmth, clashing noise, beautiful music, silence. It’s all there, in winter pointed up by the holiday paradoxes of change and reflection.:

In the urgency of buying and selling and of getting everything done, of meeting strangers and living up to expectations of family and friends, it can be challenging to find quiet moments, or to step into the quiet when such spaces are found. Yet, that’s what travel, and for me, traveling in winter in particular, is all about — the wonder, the silence, the connection that comes through

the snatch of a Chanuka song heard amidst the Christmas carols on a busy city street

Paradoxes all, holiday travels all, moments of silence in the rush, all of these.

On her album Northern Lights, Gretchen Peters has a song called Careful How You Go which gets at the heart of this idea, a song which Kim Richey wrote one eveing while contmeplating the holiday in London. Shannon Heaton’s title song for the albumFine Winter’s Night is a good companion to this sort of reflection too.

About The Author

Kerry Dexter is one of six writers who contribute to Perceptive Travel’s blog. You will often find her writing about places, events, and people connected with music, history, and the arts in Europe and North America. You may find more of Kerry's work at her site Music Road as well as in Wandering Educators, National Geographic Traveler, Ireland and the Americas, and other places online and in print.